


Down Time

by Marzipan77



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, sg-1friendathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 05:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzipan77/pseuds/Marzipan77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the sg1friendathon from the prompt: Post Evolution Part 2: Ferretti and Reynolds argue about Daniel - if he had been military, what branch he would have been?  Air Force v. Marines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down Time

**Title:** Down Time  
 **Author:** [](http://marzipan77.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://marzipan77.livejournal.com/)**marzipan77**  
 **Word count:** 5,117  
 **Rating/Warning:** T for language; canon character injury; angst; misunderstanding  
 **Spoilers:** Evolution, Fallen, Meridian  
 **Prompt:** 116\. Ferretti and Reynolds. Post Evolution Part 2: They argue about whether if Daniel had been military, what branch he would have been. Air Force v. Marines.

  
Thank you to my lovely and talented beta DennyJ!

There should be a Reg. A sub clause. A notation. Hell, a footnote buried way down there in the Quartering Section of the Air Force Code. Reynolds’ eyes crept open a fraction of an inch. Thanks to that damned Super-Soldier, he would probably have enough damned time on his hands to do a damned thorough search of those damned Regs, and heaven help the Military Affairs Officer in charge of the SGC Infirmary then.

Yep. There it was. Right where he couldn’t help looking at it. Just opposite his too short/too narrow/too firm infirmary bed. Huge. Eerie glow-in-the-dark face. Probably took those batteries that were as thick as a Marine’s neck and had enough power to run long after the sun went dark. Right there - where a guy couldn’t miss it in the nether regions of the night when his pain meds had long worn off and morning was too far away. And every minute that passed while he waited for news seemed to make those hands move slower and slower and slower.

The bright white clock-face shone from the wall, leering at him. Smirking at him. The second hand landed on each hash mark with an ear-splitting clunk that shook the metal rails of the bed and beat its rhythm in his blood.

No clocks in the infirmary. There should be a Reg.

All they did was remind you of how many meaningless and empty hours there were until … anything happened. On one side of the bed, sitting in the hard plastic chair that fit no human’s backside, it was how many hours until your buddy woke up. Or until they came to tell you the news that he wouldn’t. On the other side, squirming against starched sheets, it was how many hours until Doc Frasier finally let you go home. Until the endless night was over and a shift change brought a friendly face to distract you from your racing thoughts. Until the next shot of painkillers.

Tonight, Reynolds was on both sides. Hurting. Waiting. Worrying. Tonight, that clock was measuring all of them. Everything.

Reynolds scanned the quiet room. The lighting was dimmed, the incessantly beeping monitors muffled. Down at the other end of his row, Hendricks was out cold, still recovering from a broken pelvis. Rock fall, not Goa’uld. The nursing staff was huddled at the intake desk, Frasier in her office, eyes and ears peeled for the slightest unexpected sound. A grunt of pain. A nightmare murmur.

The ring of the phone announcing her next patient.

Siler had come and gone hours ago. Another burn. The guy’s body must be held together with nothing but scar tissue by now. But at least he’d had the latest Intel. O’Neill had found Jackson. He was alive. Shot. Sick. Tortured. But alive. And they were on their way home.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Like a bomb clock in one of those cheesy movies Teal’c liked so much. Reynolds tugged the crumpled sheet out from under his hip. The pain of his wound thumped along with every heartbeat (every movement of the clock hands); the latest round of antibiotics swirled sickeningly in his gut. He should be sleeping. At least resting. But every time he closed his eyes, Siler’s words painted brilliant images there, colored with splashes of blood, the stench of burnt flesh, the crack (tick-tick-tick) of bone.

Unfortunately, he didn’t need an acute imagination to fit Daniel’s image into those scenes. Reynolds had been around the SGC from almost the beginning – even if his loyalty had been up his own ass in those days – and he’d witnessed, read about, heard about, the mountainous load of crap that fell on Daniel’s head with regular abandon. He’d survive – the guy always survived. Well, almost always. He closed his eyes for just a moment, opened them with a whole-body jerk when the stark image of blood soaked gauze in an empty bed flashed against the darkness. Almost always.

The anger that simmered beneath the surface, which was tangled up with his own pain and anxiety, bubbled a little faster. Sarcophagus addiction. Staff weapon burns. Too many bruises and concussions to count. Ribbon devices. Loss of his body – loss of his mind. Loss of his wife. And then they’d lost him completely.

Somehow Reynolds’ eyes had fallen shut again. The lids were made of cement - glued down – unmovable. He felt the frown build ridges on his forehead. O’Neill, his hair still mostly brown, just shook his head and called Daniel a trouble magnet. Space monkey. Teal’c hovered. Carter’s smile lit up a room when she and the other Wonder Twin got going.

Since Daniel’d been back, since Reynolds had practically tripped over him on an alien world, there’d been something different about those friendships. Something strained. Stand-offish. He’d watched – the whole SGC watched – and worried. His chest rose and fell with the ticking of the clock.

Red-haired demons with glowing eyes melted into a cold white room … an old man laughed and whispered behind familiar blue eyes … skin and flesh turned into a slimy mass of bubbling death and slid from stark white bones. A barren landscape … ancient ruins held only the leftovers of a nomadic settlement … cold wind lifted every hair on the back of his neck as he patrolled … white mist hid the landscape, turned the sounds all hollow … he stumbled and found only a set of empty blue robes lying in an empty tent.

Reynolds’ eyes snapped open, cold sweat like a layer of oil on his skin.

“Sorry, sir – didn’t mean to wake you.”

He wiped the back of his hand across his face and tried to swallow in a dry throat. Blinking against the bright lights, Reynolds finally focused on the Styrofoam cup in the young Marine sergeant’s hand.

“Sir?”

“Thanks.” The water was barely cool and tasted of medicine and metal, but it unlocked Reynolds’ throat and began to wash away the fog. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

“What time is it, Orsler?”

The buzz-cut head swiveled to eye the bland, mocking face of that same damned clock before answering.

“Uh, zero-nine-thirty, sir.” The kid, newest recruit to SG-3, shifted his weight awkwardly. “We thought, what with all the rushing around getting Doctor Jackson back, that you’d be awake and –“

“Daniel’s back-“ His instinctive surge upward was stopped by a painful ‘hello’ from his wound and he jerked to a halt, hissing, right hand flat against the bandage.

“Hang on, Colonel.” A dark-haired nurse swept past his young teammate and supported his back, fingers busy with his IV. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh – didn’t – “ he closed his eyes against the pain. “Wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

“Sheesh, Tinnie, you’ve been hanging around with the jarheads too long. Forgot how to think.”

He opened his eyes to a familiar smiling face. “Funny, Lou. HI-larious.” God, he hated that nickname.  
Orsler had snapped to attention, shoulders back, his head held too erect for comfort. Reynolds had to give the kid credit – approaching one bird colonel without orders – even an infirmary bound unit commander – took balls. Facing two should reduce any intelligent grunt to stammering retreat.

Then again, the kid was a Marine. Hoo-rah.

“At ease, Orsler,” he growled. The sergeant’s stiff posture just served to remind him of the huge gap between them – in age, fitness, and, dammit, Reynolds bent one knee to relieve the strain on his back, in flexibility. At least Lou Ferretti had been chewed up as much as Reynolds and carried the scars and aching joints to prove it.

While the nurse moved purposefully, rearranging pillows, checking monitors, cleaning the IV port on his arm, Ferretti stepped to the bedside and nodded dismissal at Reynolds’ young teammate.

“Give us a minute, son.”

“Yes, sir.” Dark eyes under a smooth brow flicked towards his injured commander.

“Tell the team I’m doing well. Just about ready to get out of here and start kicking ass and taking names.” He held the kid’s concerned gaze, picking up the trace of fear, the sudden maturity that comes with facing Super-Soldiers, getting captured by the Goa’uld, and watching your commander bleed out when there’s nothing you can do about it. Too young. Too green. But he was a good kid at heart. He’d learn. “Come by later, Orsler. And bring that poker deck you and Jamison think you’re hiding in your gear.”

The pinking of the kid’s cheeks belied his attempt at ‘smooth and unruffled.’ “Sir?”

Ferretti chuckled, clapping the Marine on the shoulder. “Better round up your spare change, too, kid. We don’t call the colonel ‘poker-face’ because of how calm he stays in the face of the enemy.”

Another uncomfortable nod and the young Marine was gone. Reynolds found himself watching Ferretti watch the kid go, his friend’s head turning slowly, side to side, hands on his hips.

“Tell me we were that young once,” Lou finally whispered.

Reynolds’ smile was forced. “Naive. Ignorant. Far too enthusiastic for our own good, yes. Young?” He sighed, leaning back gratefully against the neat pile of pillows. “I can’t remember that far back.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Ferretti denied a second later.

Eyes closed, Reynolds heard the creak of the hard plastic chair and imagined the other man’s grimace as it cut in sharply against the backs of his knees and squeezed his butt into an unnatural shape. He listened, letting the other sounds of the daytime infirmary fill the space around him. Hushed voices – insistent and heavy with worry – spilled from the next row of beds. Right down at the end, right next to the entrance of the surgical ward, where there was a touch more privacy, and proximity to Frasier’s office. Metal trays clanked. Fabric rustled. Stifled gasps of pain were followed quickly by low murmurs of apology or encouragement. Sharp orders were snapped by a familiar feminine voice. And, finally, the back and forth of an exhausted “Jack” and a frustrated “Daniel” fell into place between the ticks of the infernal, inescapable clock.

The sigh from beside his bed matched his own and Reynolds opened his eyes to meet his old friend’s with a wry smile.

“So, he’s back.”

“Yeah.”

For the first time, Reynolds noticed the fatigue painting dark circles under Ferretti’s eyes. “Were you on the extraction team?”

“Huh.” The grunt was part anger, part disappointment. “I guess you could call it that.”

He waited.

Ferretti scrubbed one hand through his short hair and then dropped it to knead the back of his neck. “Am I the only one who thought this whole thing had fiasco stamped on it from the start?

“Which part?”

Ferretti huffed out a laugh. “Exactly.”

“Just tell me this ‘insertion’ into rebel-filled Central America wasn’t O’Neill’s idea.”

“Insertion of two civilians with no back up?” Ferretti chewed the words out through tightly clenched teeth. “I don’t know where the idea came from, but O’Neill and Hammond both signed off on it.”

Smoothing the thin sheet over his chest, Reynolds realized that the anger that had ridden down into sleep with him had woken up with the renewed pain of his shoulder. He drew in a long breath, pressing anger and pain into the background. “Don’t know if you can really call Daniel a civilian any more. The man’s been in the middle of more combat missions than most of the military on base.”

“Still a civilian, Tinnie. A damned important, one-of-a-kind, genius civilian who we just got back from oblivion. You’d think the powers that be might have a little bit of interest in keeping him safe.”

“The man knows what he’s doing. He’s been sent out alone before – off-world, even.” Reynolds knew he was devil’s advocating this; Ferretti’s cold, intense stare told him that so did he.

“And that was a mistake, too. And you know it.” Lou leaned forward. “We’re supposed to protect our irreplaceable assets, Eric, not throw them out there, unarmed and exposed, to fend for themselves.” He mocked a big bon-voyage wave. “Bye! Have fun storming the castle! Bring me back a sombrero!”

“I know. I know.” One hand rose and flopped back to the mattress, trying to wave off his friend’s tirade. He swallowed, his throat thick with a combination of medicine, fatigue, and worry. “I do know that Daniel agreed to it.”

Ferretti threw both hands up in the air. “Of course he did. Doctor Daniel Jackson should be a jarhead with the amount of thought he puts behind some of his ill-fated, suicidal, ‘send me in coach,’ decisions.”

The image of the peaceful diplomat as Reynolds had first seen him – long hair, huge round glasses, awkward and sneezing - sporting a buzz cut and doing chin-ups and wind-sprints in a Marine uniform drew a bubble of laughter from deep in Reynolds’ gut. It devolved quickly into racking coughs. Hand pressed hard against his shoulder again, he doubled over, grunts of pain slipping out between his teeth. Ferretti was right there with him, holding tight, his own dark thoughts making his posture rigid and stiff.

“Yeah,” Reynolds finally managed to choke out, “we both know that image of Daniel is too close to the truth to be funny anymore.”

“Not funny. Just – just wrong.” Lou tipped him back against the pillows and shoved a cup of water into his shaking hand. “I don’t like it. I used to think I knew O’Neill pretty damn well.”

The accusations Ferretti didn’t voice rang in the air, loud and clear. Reynolds had stood beside O’Neill when they’d dialed the ‘gate that would take them to Ramius’ world, which would put them that much more out of touch with anything that happened to Daniel and Dr. Lee down in Honduras. O’Neill had been grim – his humor forced and cutting, his well-known impatience ramped up to come off as anger. Bitterness. Even disdain. He’d put it down to worry. O’Neill’s team was split up, out of his reach, out of his control. No team leader was comfortable with that.

But there was something else. Something that didn’t feel like O’Neill’s usual mother-hen act. Something darker.

“What exactly did SG-2 do during the extraction, Lou?”

Ferretti’s eyes were shadowed, as he scanned the curtain at the end of Reynolds’ bed, as if pure focus could let him see through it to what was happening in the next row. “We waited.”

“You – “

Hands tightening into fists at his sides, Ferretti managed to tell his story in an even, unemotional tone, his voice pitched to reach only Reynolds’ ears. “SG-2 inserted with O’Neill via helo. We dropped him outside a little town – the last place Daniel and Bill were seen. He was supposed to meet up with an agent there, the guy who, apparently, insisted on O’Neill as the field commander.” His chest rose and fell as if he laughed, but no sound came out. “Field commander – with no one and nothing to command.”

“You didn’t stay with him?”

“He ordered us back to the rendezvous point to wait for his call.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

What the hell was this? SG team members suddenly ordered off on their own, teams split into twos and threes – or, even worse, good men and women sent off alone? What happened to protocol? To back-up? Why the hell have teams at all if everyone was going to be on his own, with no one to watch his six? He watched the sweep of the second hand, his stomach curdling, acid surging towards his throat. Was this what change felt like from the inside?

“We got the call twelve hours later and set down just outside a rebel encampment. All the rebels were dead – or had run off. Lee had the Telchak device. And Daniel …”

As Ferretti’s words trailed off, the sounds from the next row of beds increased. Grunts. Gasps. Muffled curses.

“If you’d let me put you out, Daniel.” Frasier’s voice, her professionalism drowning in discomfort. “You need more than a local – you’ll need a general anesthetic for the surgery to get the bullet out.”

“No – no – “ Daniel’s shaking demands trailed icy fingers up Reynolds’ spine and he locked eyes with the leader of SG-2. “’ts okay. Don’ wanna sleep.” A hiccup – a sick laugh – some soft noise of despair. “R’minds me too much – of when – I cud’nt – wake up.”

“Doctor Jackson-“ The Doc was coming closer to begging than Reynolds had ever heard her.

“Knew – knew you’d un’erstand, J’net.”

“Geez, Daniel. Will you just take the damn drugs?”

O’Neill. Angry. Frustrated. A thick coating of misery taking the sharp edge from every word.

In the expectant silence that followed, the ticking of the clock was ear-splitting.

“… m’kay.”

Four signs of relief echoed from concrete walls. Ferretti fell into the chair next to the bed and sent a quick nod in his direction.

Reynolds fidgeted, his own impatience and the need for answers winning out over the continued pain and restlessness. “So,” he finally prompted when Ferretti didn’t seem interested in continuing his story, “you went in for the pick-up.”

“Yeah. Lee seemed okay. A little bruised, dehydrated. Poor guy.” Ferretti shook his head. “Lee’s never had the training for field work, not for our kind of field work, anyway. Never had weapons training or …“

Siler’s quiet statement as he stood by the infirmary phone came back to Reynolds. “How to survive capture. Resist torture.”

“Exactly.” Ferretti’s shoulders slumped as the man leaned back in the chair. “Daniel took the brunt of it. Protected him.”

Reynolds felt the bitter smile draw his mouth to one side. “Just like a good CO should do.”

“Colonel Daniel Jackson. Air Force or Marines?” Ferretti asked with a chuckle.

“I think we might need to invent another kind of service for that particular chain of command,” Reynolds laughed. The moment passed. “Tortured,” he urged him on again.

“Yeah. They used some of the classics. No water. No food. Confined in a metal hut in the heat of the day and cold of night. Beatings.” The career officer hesitated, his head turning towards the silence shrieking at them from beyond the curtains. “Battery-rigged electric current.”

Reynolds’ shoulder throbbed in sympathy. That explained Frasier’s discomfort. Debridement of burns was a nasty business – for both patient and doctor. Luckily, he had been practically stoned on pain meds and exhaustion by the time she’d gotten started on him. “Damn.” How long had the guy been nursing burns and bruises, cracked ribs and exhaustion, before they got him back here?

“No stops for emergency medical – “

“No,” Ferretti interrupted. “Daniel – he wouldn’t let anybody get too close to him at that point, but those sweet blue eyes can tear a hole through you like a laser beam when he gets riled up. He just kept clutching the canvas sack to his chest, repeating that the Telchak device was unpredictable and not in any way safe. Had to get it back here. No stop offs for a nice, clean hospital visit, not even to remove the bullet from his leg.”

No. That’s – as much as they joked about Daniel being a kick-ass commanding officer, O’Neill was his team leader. “That would not have happened in my unit. Or in yours, would it, Lou?”

“No effing way.”

Why didn’t O’Neill take over? Demand treatment for his teammate? Put his damned foot down? Those were the unasked question circling their heads like vultures.

Reynolds leaned to the side as well as he could. “What the hell’s going on, Lou?”

“Damned if I know,” Ferretti snapped back, features hardening into rugged lines. “We just got him back. And O’Neill acts like he’d like nothing better than to get rid of him again.”

Explanations and excuses trailed through Reynolds’ mind, allowing for grief, for guilt, for fear of going through the painful loss of a good friend once again. His gaze came to rest on the glowing clock-face across from his bed. It ticked off the minutes, the seconds of his life. Empty seconds, lying here in bed when he could be out there, making a difference. It counted off the moments that he would never get back. Moments with friends. With family. Watching his niece and nephew’s smiles; holding his grandfather’s paper-skinned hand. Raising a glass with his friends. The clock didn’t pause, it didn’t wait for him to appreciate what he had, it just kept on ticking, remorselessly. Reminding him that, with every movement of its hands, he had fewer moments left to treasure.

“I’ll take him.”

Ferretti raised his eyes. “What?”

“O’Neill doesn’t want him? Fine. I’d have Daniel on my team in a hot second.” Reynolds squirmed into a more upright position. “Get the General for me, will you, Lou? I want to talk to him.”

“Hold on, no one said O’Neill was ready to –“

“Something’s going on, Lou. Something I don’t like. Doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines,” he grunted, trying to smooth his hair down with his one good hand. He knew his thoughts were a little fuzzy, his reasoning not quite linear due to the pain meds. “I don’t give a damn which service Daniel belongs in, he sure as hell needs more back-up, more teamwork, than he’s getting.”

“Okay, I get you, Tinnie. But you’re going to have to get in line. I knew him first.”

Reynolds’ eyes narrowed. “You don’t want him, Lou.”

Surprise knocked Ferretti backward, eyes wide. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Didn’t you throw his books down some sand dunes when you first met?” Reynolds was tugging the damned scrub top straight. He didn’t want the General to see him like this, but he had to act fast. Once the word got around the O’Neill didn’t want responsibility for Daniel anymore, didn’t want to watch his back, the requisitions would be piling up. He bent down and sniffed at his armpit. “Damn. I need shower.”

“Yeah, not gonna volunteer to help you with that one, no matter how much I like you.”

Muttering dark threats, Reynolds threw back the sheets and hitched towards the edge of the bed.

“What do you think you’re doing, Colonel?”

Slowly, Reynolds raised his eyes past the skimpy white scrub pants, to his bare – dirty – feet, up the clean, well-pressed length of uniform pants, the strong chest, two stars gleaming on the shoulders, to his commanding general’s stern face.

“Uh – just … coming to see you, sir.”

“Is that so?” General Hammond came to a halt at the foot of the bed, blocking Reynolds’ view of the damned stupid clock. “And do you have Doctor Frasier’s permission to leave your bed, let alone the infirmary, Colonel?” Hammond’s voice held equal parts humor, patience, and exasperation. Eyebrow raised, he managed to nod ‘at ease’ in Ferretti’s direction before the leader of SG-2 had done more than get his feet organized beneath him. “With that IV in your arm, it doesn’t seem likely.”

“Ah, no, sir. But I wanted … it’s important that …”

“What my doped-up buddy wants to say, General,” Ferretti nudged him in the hip, encouraging Reynolds to pull his dirty feet back under the covers, “is that, if there’s a change coming, some kind of … reorganization of SG teams - transfers and the like - we’d like to be the first to put in our requests.”

Hammond had mastered the art of the placid, poker-face, and had more years in command to hone it to perfection than Reynolds ever would. “Reorganization of personnel. And both you team leaders are looking to do, what, exactly?”

“Ask for Daniel – for Doctor Jackson. He’d be a welcome addition, sir. And we’d take good care of him,” Reynolds blurted out before Ferretti could claim priority again. “SG-3 needs a diplomat, sir. We’ve got plenty of grunts, good men, but I could use an intelligent guy to balance out all the testosterone.”

“I see.” Hammond turned to eye Ferretti. “I assume SG-2 is also looking for a diplomat, Colonel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’d also, ‘take good care of him’?”

Reynolds huffed. “Couldn’t do much worse than – “

“Colonel O’Neill,” Hammond interrupted smoothly, his gaze never wavering from Reynolds’ face. “It seems a few of our teams are under the impression that Doctor Jackson’s skills and abilities are being both underutilized and underappreciated on SG-1. Do you have anything to say concerning this matter?”

Loomed. That was the only word for it. Jack O’Neill loomed over Hammond’s shoulder, coalescing out of the shadows lurking in the infirmary’s corners. “Oh, I have plenty to say concerning this … issue … sir.”  
Maybe it was the pain meds. Or the pain. Exhaustion. Or the fact that Reynolds was so tired of loss and grief, of memorial services and new, shiny faces under his command. Maybe it was the interminable menace of that clock, reminding him of lives gone, condolence letters written, and empty spaces at the mess tables. Some combination of those things pushed the military-honed filter right off his tongue. Whatever it was, O’Neill’s imposing, and condescending presence wasn’t going to stop him this time.

“Why was Daniel sent into known dangerous territory without back-up, sir? We took four teams and heavy armaments to Ramius’ world to grab one enemy combatant. Why wasn’t Daniel’s commanding officer the least bit concerned about him, his mission, or his safe return? Why wasn’t he given immediate medical attention before the long ride back to base?” O’Neill’s stare turned frosty after Reynolds’ first question, but that didn’t stop him. “I have a lot more questions, General, and no disrespect to you or to your command, but, if I was Doctor Jackson’s commanding officer, I would have made a different call every damn time.”

Hammond’s face paled – whether with fury or self-recrimination, Reynolds couldn’t tell. O’Neill just stood there, arms crossed, solid as an oak.

And, just as the clock’s minute hand clicked upright with a dull thud, Reynolds fought through his fog to notice the deep creases at the corners of O’Neill’s mouth – the dark circles beneath the general’s eyes. Shit. Dread dropped like a rock in his gut. Out of loop, with maybe half the Intel, and he and Lou had put all four of their booted feet in their mouths up to the knee.

“I’d have preferred to put off this discussion until you were released from the infirmary, Colonel. In my office. In private.”

“Yes, sir,” he breathed, leaning back against the uncomfortable rock-fall of pillows his abrupt movements had piled up behind him. “No excuse, sir.” He offered the only apology ever accepted in a military chain of command.

“Huh,” Hammond grunted, his entire body jerking with tension. “I think there are plenty of excuses laying thick on the ground right about now, Colonel. What happened to Doctor Jackson and Doctor Lee is unconscionable and will not be repeated, I assure you. What we need now, however, are good men like you and Colonel Ferretti to keep your … perceptive comments … to yourselves until Colonel O’Neill and I can convince a certain group of interfering, arrogant, small-minded –“

“- small-dicked, pencil-pushing morons – “

Hammond’s half-hearted glare turned O’Neill’s tirade into sotto voce mutterings, “- among the president’s advisors that our four-person SG teams should continue to be the standard protocol when pursuing the SGC’s interests both off-world and here on Earth. And that, no matter how much experience our well-trained civilians have gained, our military men and women are ultimately responsible to make sure this nation’s –“

“- this world’s –“ O’Neill inserted smoothly.

“- most important assets are safeguarded.”

“Hoo-rah, General.” Reynolds saw the tiny flick of a smile on O’Neill’s face at the traditional Marine exclamation.

“To put it bluntly,” Hammond continued, moving a step closer and lowering his voice, “we will not be putting our best people in impossible situations with no back-up ever again.”

“Not if I can help it,” O’Neill insisted with a smile that promised that he could ‘help’ quite a bit - with swift and lethal accuracy. “I’ve always hated arm-chair quarterbacks, haven’t you guys? Oh, and just for the record,” the silver-haired colonel leaned closer, the cold fury that must have been boiling beneath his hard, controlled surface for days rushing out from every pore, “nobody should be looking to ‘reorganize’ Daniel off my team until and unless hell freezes over.”

Reynolds felt Ferretti shift beside him. “Understood. Sir.”

“Very well.” Hammond straightened his already rigid spine. “Carry on. Glad to see you feeling better, Colonel Reynolds.” The general hurried away towards the sounds of gurney wheels and medical orders being snapped in the next row, O’Neill at his heels.

Just before the leader of SG-1 turned the corner, he leaned back, dark eyes twinkling. “Hey, Lou. You remember what happens to people who ‘ass-ume,’ don’t ya?”

And then he was gone.

The doors to the surgical ward swung shut with a swish and a click and Reynolds’ eyes went straight to the clock. Again. Stupid thing. He shifted restlessly. Waiting always made him stupid.

“Yeah, so, I should go,” Ferretti mumbled.

“Uh, yeah, thanks for coming by.” Reynolds reached out his right hand, and finally met his old friend’s wry gaze over their clasped hands. “God, we’re idiots.”

Ferretti smiled. “Yep. Don’t have the brain cells God gave a Marine.”

“Let alone a civilian archaeologist.”

Reynolds laughed. “Thank God for that. His kind of problems I don’t need.”

“Me neither.” Ferretti tapped one fist on the mattress beside him. “Let me know if you need any help whipping those baby-faces on your team into shape.”

“You think you could handle my men?” Reynolds’ eyebrows climbed towards his unfortunately receding hairline. “Huh. Not damned likely.”

Lou jerked his head towards the surgery doors. “I could probably get Daniel to take them out in the field and put the fear of … some ancient god … into them.”

“With O’Neill tagging along pointing out how he was doing it all wrong.”

“Naturally.”

With a mock salute and a sideways grin, Ferretti was gone. And Reynolds was left alone, to contemplate his own idiotic assumptions and faulty reasoning, and to metaphorically kick himself in the ass for forgetting how many layers hid underneath O’Neill’s poker-face.

Daniel would be in surgery for a while. He squirmed, wrestling his unwieldy, thick-feeling body into a more comfortable position. He could wait. O’Neill and Hammond would be waiting together, right outside the operating room – that he didn’t have to make an assumption about.

Reynolds would just wait here. Alone. With that damned clock ticking off every single second.

There should be a Reg.  



End file.
